Cheerful Abundance

a field notebook of suburban life

Faithful readers know that I bought a house last summer, before I put my old place on the market, because I love paying property taxes so much that I wanted to do it at two addresses at the same time. And because everybody knows that buying a new place before selling your old place is just good business sense (ha!) And then it took us forever to move out fully, because we are idiots, and then it took longer and longer to clean it up and get it ready to be on the market because we just did not want to go back there. We are moving forward kind of people. Also, it is very disheartening to fix the flaws you lived with just fine because you were too lazy to fix them, just because apparently buyers will be aghast at the horror of those same flaws and run screaming from them.

But we finally got it ready, and hooked up with a realtor, who walked through the place, pointed out everything that was wrong with it and unfixable, and complained about the lack of parking. He was quick to tell us he didn’t like the size of the kitchen, the street parking situation, or the lack of another bathroom. It was a little surreal, because he couldn’t find anything to like about the property, but was quick to tell us what would make it hard to sell. Dude, you are a salesman. This is your job. No property is perfect, and it is your job to make the buyers see the positives, and help them overcome any negatives. Is this a normal practice for realtors, to point out the flaws you can’t fix? Needless to say, we didn’t hire him. The giant rooms, sweeping expanse of windows, and 12 foot ceilings? He couldn’t see it.

But then … ugh. We were back at square one. After we regrouped from our meeting with Captain Negativity, we met with another realtor, one who came in and commented on everything right with the place, and who gave us a very doable list of stuff she wanted us to fix (that was actually fixable!) before we listed. Paint touch ups, some cleaning, adding in a little furniture. Doable stuff. Stuff we expected to do. None of Captain Negative’s ‘Can you put in a second bathroom’ nonsense. We were so thrilled that we signed with her and off we puttered, cleaning up the baseboards, weeding the front garden, and then …. on the MLS we went.

Real estate right now is crazy, people. Crazy! We fielded several ‘almost offers’, but the first one on paper was full-ask, with a pre-approved mortgage. I died a little. 4 days from listing to signed offer.

But nothing goes smoothly, does it? Turns out, the mortgage business, and banking in general, has forgotten how this whole ‘buying a house’ thing works. Pre-approval means nothing. Sure, our buyers were pre-approved, but now they might not be able to actually get a mortgage from the company that approved them to get the mortgage. Does that make sense to you? No? Me, either. They love the place, we would love to sell it to them, and somehow, it is becoming increasingly evident that that can’t happen. And I am sad, not just because I obviously would like to sell it and have that be one thing off my massive to-do list, but also because this apartment is just such a heavenly place to live, and I love the idea of it going to someone who feels the same way about it. We kept the windows wide open 9 months of the year, while we lived here, and it felt like living in a giant tree-house, an oasis in the middle of a big city. And I think the people that made the offer felt it, too – the peacefulness of the space. So now we are all praying to the mortgage Gods that it works out, because otherwise, we have to cancel the contract and start again.